Apple Cup

Free (Fallin’) Association

/ Deb / Leave a comment

Early morning in the car, traveling to Vancouver for a work obligation.   Can’t say that I mind the solitude of a three-hour drive, and the space that it provides.

I toggle through the radio stations until something sticks: Tom Petty, “Free Fallin”. And then comes the same memory that it always conjures up for me: road trip to an early 90’s Apple Cup in Pullman, in a rented RV. Most of us are busy with keg cups and Tom Petty in the back of the RV, while one lonely friend has drawn the unenviable task of driving our sorry drunk asses across the state. In the snow. (Also musically relevant to that trip: “Radar Love”). In all fairness, however, there were two Apple Cup road trips, and the two have mostly merged in my brain as one memory, with the exception of the game outcomes.

Thankful that I am not in a beer-soaked RV on this morning, these things now come to mind:

  1. I can’t believe there was a rental company who would rent an RV to a bunch of kids in their early 20’s;
  2. Thank you Karl, for driving, which had to have sucked almost as much as whatever damage deposit you probably didn’t get back;
  3. Damn, I really should have gone to see Tom Petty in concert at some point before it was too late.
 
 
 

Show-vember is here!

/ Deb / Leave a comment

I’ve taken a long absence from the beloved comfort of this blog.  Not that I haven’t wanted to sit down and live in my head……write words that I fuss over and then, when I hit “publish”, panic like a young mom dropping her kid off for his first day of preschool.   I always want to do that.  Over the past few months, though, my life has been consumed with sunshine, family, and work that actually earns money.

But now the rain is here, I’m in modified hermit mode, and, after not seeing any concerts since August, it just so happens that, for the first 2 weeks of November, I have tickets to four different shows. I’m officially calling it Show-vember, and have decided it’s a sign to come home to my little corner of cyberspace.

It’s always interesting how concerts end up getting lumped closely together for me.  I can go for a few months without a show, and then it seems that all the shows I want to see are bunched together within a short time frame.  I take them on like a musical triathlon – proper pacing being of utmost importance.  My personal long-standing record was established in 2001:  three different shows in three states, within the span of a week (if it matters:  Ben Harper in Seattle, Dave Matthews Band in Las Vegas, and Sting in Chicago.  Ben is the only one I listen to anymore).

And so I’m gearing up for some great music from artists that I love, in a month that thumbs its nose at dreary weather with many fabulous things:  my birthday, Thanksgiving and the Apple Cup (“We’ve Got a Thing…”). And now, also……The Black Keys, Ben Gibbard, Chadwick Stokes and the White Buffalo.  Happy Show-vember to me (and also to you….go to a show, I promise it will make November bearable)!

We’ve Got a Thing, and it’s Called..

/ Deb / 2 Comments

Radar Love. In the car coming home from Costco today. One of the best driving songs ever, hands down. But what it really reminds me of, instantaneously – 1992 Apple Cup, Pullman. The Drew Bledsoe year.

Freezing cold in butt-deep snow, we ended up in The Cavern, which, if memory serves, was a bar…on campus(?)

By the second half, the game was of no interest to any UW fan.  We danced, we spun, with the game on in the background.  A Coug stole my Husky hat and probably did unspeakable things with it.

The game wore on…we lost, convincingly. By this time, the jukebox was playing Pearl Jam, and in our Seattle-centric, drunkenly superior mindset, we taunted the Coug fans: yeah, you cowboy hicks, you might have won the game, but we’ve got Eddie Vedder.